Brown TV Roman Gonzalez: roman.walter.gonzalez@gmail.com

Supplemental Funding Request Cover Page

November 20, 2008 The following proposal has its more proper presentation in the written speech to follow and throughout the proposal itself. However, here I may say that we requested funds last Spring in a kind of ignorantly minimalist manner (minimalist because we did not have the knowledge to ask for anything more) so that we did not take money from the University that we did not know how to use. Since then, and in the past few months especially, BTV has grown exponentially and continues to rise in experience in knowledge. Now we have an exhaustive list of items that will take us through many phases of our missions, items having to do with publicity, sound, lighting, video, and more. The quality of each of the themes I’ve just presented is of utmost importance to the overall quality of BTV productions. Much on the list is absolutely needed for BTV to come back in any real way next semester. We hope you find the proposal proper and easy to navigate. We ask you to excuse its length but not its ambition. Proposal is attached on an attached Microsoft Excel Document. Sector Description Requested Cost Supplies $18,123 Publicity $1000 Total $19,123

1

Brown TV Guide to Lighting and the Kino Flo light

I. Lighting In General So when you see a movie, you see, correct? Correct. We can agree on this much. Now, everything you see is light, so the lighting of a production has everything, 100%, to do with what you see. This is not meant to dumb down the importance of light, but to simply state the very common-sensical notion of why light is such a big deal in productions. This said, the standard lighting system is a 3 point lighting system: key light (main, strongest light), fill light (supporting light for unlit area of subject) and a backlight (to make the hair glow and make the subject stunning. With this in mind, BTV needs AT LEAST 3 lights---and we need quality lighting. Documentary interview lighting takes at least two additional lights: one for hair and one for the background (with a cuculoris, you avoid many needs for a third extra light). So BTV, if it wants to conduct quality looking interviews (and it does), needs about 5 lights. As you know, there is hard light and there is soft light. One of the biggest problems with amateur lighting is that all the light is all hard and uneven: the key is diffusing the light---it’s much more natural. All lights come hard by default except for the Kino Flo lamps, which are designed to be diffused (this will be elaborated on in the following section). Tungsten lights are harder than fluorescent, and still very much serve a strong purpose in film: the sharp lighting. We have requested tungsten lights than and fluorescent lights. We will need both. The Kino flow is our one big investment for lighting. Having at least one light like the Kino Flo immediately upgrades the credibility of any production by a mile. It’s professional lighting, and not toy-around lighting. One of the Saw movies was lit entirely by Kino Flos, of a higher quality, of course. What BTV NEEDS in Lighting

• 3-5 lights (key, fill, back, background, versatility light) • Both fluorescent and tungsten • Diffusers to soften the lighting: we MUST soften the lighting • Stands and umbrellas for everything • Did I mention we NEED to soften the light?

II. Kino Flo and Fluorescent Lighting (Going with the Flo)

By Tom Kirkman

Film Fluorescent lighting has certainly come a long way since the days when it was reviled as a "green monster" producing ghoulish skin tones, to be avoided when possible or corrected begrudgingly with many yards of CC gel. Then there was the question of ballast. Standard fluorescent ballasts not only hum annoyingly but cause intensity fluctuations which the camera sees as flicker, placing severe restrictions on useable shutter speeds and angles.

All that changed when during the1987 filming of the movie Barfly, when Frieder Hochheim, a gaffer working with DP Robby Mueller, was able to bring his experimentation with high-intensity fluorescents to fruition, using lamps from 9 inches to four feet long. By separating them from the ballasts, the lamps could be easily hidden, and due to their low heat, affixed to surfaces that would burn in proximity to standard tungsten lights. Best yet, you could shoot wide and still not notice them in the shot.

2

(…) Prior to Barfly, Hochheim had been experimenting with fluorescents for a couple of years ever since a DP he was working with expressed the desire to use them - but without the ballasts. Always a positive thinker, Hochheim and his Best Boy and future partner, Gary Swink, mounted the bulbs in a lightweight block of foam that could be double-stuck to the ceiling. All that was left to do was to attach the magnetic ballasts remotely and….it didn't work. The long list of reasons why was topped by the noise and low frequency of the ballasts which couldn't drive the remote lamps.

Swink and Hochheim didn't abandon hope and the missing piece of the puzzle came in the form of an engineering team utilizing high-frequency ballasts in copy machines. They were up and running and the word of mouth subsequent to Barfly made them very popular guys. The team spent less and less time on the set and more time in Swink's garage, which had become a makeshift workshop for their budding business where they turned out rental units that were in increasing demand.

Their thinking began to shift in two key ways. First, where they initially considered the units as expendables for limited reuse, they began to realize that more robust materials would rent a lot longer. Second, longevity meant that sales were an option. With this in mind, they plowed their rental income back into the business until the design problems were worked out and they received a U.S. patent in 1992. The next year, the units became available for sale.

The final hurdle was the development of full spectrum True-Match lamps, a process that took several years, culminating in 2900k, 3200k and 5500k lamps covering the tungsten- to-daylight spectrum, without the need for filtration. Hochheim acknowledges that Kino Flo would not have achieved its current status without their introduction. The Motion Picture Academy agreed, awarding Kino a Technical Achievement Award in 1995. Today Kino produces about 10 categories of heads with multiple variations on each, as well as other lighting esoterica and products in development available for rental, using 9-12" lamps like the MiniFlo or Barfly (200 or 100), to 8 foot units like the Mega. Uses include everything from single dashboard lights in car shots to vast overhead banks simulating sky light, or 300-foot greenscreen walls made up of multiple units. While it's safe to say that Kino is a motion picture-driven enterprise, it's the dedication to the end-users, those in the field, whose feedback keeps the company on the cusp of innovation.

3

Mini-Flo

Barfly

We at B&H have noticed a huge surge of interest in the 4Bank and especially the Diva-Lite, by small production companies and videographers who are also embracing the soft shadowless look of the Kamio ringlight for on-camera use.

Diva-Lite 200 and 400

4

Kamio in action

Of course, the customer who plunks down their cash for today's polished Kino product isn't necessarily aware of the 20 years of R&D that went into his instrument, since light-shaping quality alone is usually a sufficient determining factor for the purchase.

Simply put, considered collectively, the benefits of fluorescent present an overwhelming argument for its use:

Fluorescent Positive Qualities

• Light weight of fixture • Use of single lamps of various sizes

• Separation of power source from lamp, making hidden placement easy with countless mounting options • Relatively cool to the touch, making quick changes of lamps possible w/o gloves

• Efficient: 90-95% of fluorescent energy is emitted as light and 5-10% as heat. Conversely, tungsten emits 5-10% energy as light and 90-95% as heat • Low operating temperature lowers air conditioning cost • Long-life lamps

5

• Custom spectrum lamps: 2900 Kelvin, 3200 Kelvin (tungsten balanced), 5500 Kelvin (daylight balanced), 420nm blue and the 525nm green are often used in traveling matte photography on bluescreen and greenscreen stages. Other colors available from Kino Flo include gold, pink, red and UV blacklight for set-design work.

• Low electrical draw: runs on household AC with high output. Efficient battery and inverter use. • Quiet ballasts • Wrap-around light: combination of soft glow and low heat make possible close subject proximity to sources. Small lamps have literally been taped onto actors w/o injury. • Space Efficient: low profile fixtures can be used as direct sources in tight spaces, eliminating need for frames, bounce cards, softboxes etc. • Multi-lamp fixtures w/ switching options: possible to mix different Kelvin temperature lamps in the same fixture. • Low operating cost (amps): Fluorescents are approximately 6x more efficient than tungsten lights, 110 watts fluorescent produces the equivalent of 650 watts of tungsten light. It's easy to see that running costs are significantly lower.

While Tungsten and HMI lights will always have their place in production, particularly in the area of long-throw or tightly-controlled beams of light, even that position is being challenged. Typified by the ParaBeam and VistaBeam, a new group of fixtures developed especially for the broadcast industry incorporates parabolic reflectors that lengthen the throw and intensify the beam using only 25% of the amperage necessary for traditional fixtures.

6

For a list of all products highlighted in this article, click here.

Please email feedback on this article, or suggestions for future topics, to videofeedback@bhphotovideo.com

7